[WikiEN-l] Featured editors?

[joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu]

Quoting Raphael Wegmann <wegmann at psi.co.at>:

> On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 05:41:21PM -0500, joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu wrote:
>> Quoting Raphael Wegmann <raphael at psi.co.at>:
>>
>> > Guy Chapman aka JzG schrieb:
>> >> On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 18:52:43 +0100, Raphael Wegmann
>> >> <raphael at psi.co.at> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>>> No, the only people who need to fear that are the *already banned*
>> >>>> abusers of the project whose socks we are blocking on an almost
>> >>>> daily basis.
>> >>
>> >>> And what kind of magic is involved in finding those socks?
>> >>> In what way is it different from a witch hunt?
>> >>
>> >> The average sockpuppet is traceable via IP using CheckUser and other
>> >> methods, whereas witch hunts require ducking stools and the like.
>> >
>> > None of those methods is verifiable by a normal editor.
>> > Therefore CheckUser and "other methods" are a kind of
>> > "witchcraft" for non-admins, where only the adepts make
>> > decisions.
>>
>> Are you saying that you don't trust the people we have doing checkuser?
>> Or that
>> you don't trust Durova and others who are good at picking up subtle 
>> signals of
>> socks? The first case, my response is going to be close to "well, 
>> too bad. The
>> rest of the community trusts them. If you disagree you need a good
>> reason"- the
>> second case simply doesn't hold water because Durova, Guy and others
>> are always willing to email trusted users their evidence.
>
> What are those "other methods"? According to WP:SOCK
> "similarities in interests and editing style" might help
> to detect sockpuppets. If this is the case, how can we
> make sure, that we do not block different editors,
> who happen to share the same POV? Does it matter at all
> since we might call them as well meatpuppets?
> How do we prevent admins from blocking not a vandal
> but a certain POV?

For an example of what this sort of evidence can look like see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Agapetos_angel/Evidence#Evidence_that_220.245.180..2A_is_Jonathan_Sarfati
This isn't an ideal example since it is linking an IP address to 
someone outside
Wikipedia and I didn't know as much about this sort of thing way back in March
of 2006 as I know now. And I'm certainly not as good as picking up subtle cues
as Durova is. As is I hope apparent in this particular case, the editing
patterns extended not just from POV but from a unique intersection of 
interests
as well as some linguistic quirks.

Furthermore, even if admins were blocking a specific POV- so what? In 
order for
a POV to look similar to a blocked editor it generally needs to be extreme and
with no caring for NPOV. So even if such blocks were occasionally occurring we
aren't losing much. Consider for example, some socks of Jason Gastrich we've
blocked. At least one of those I think wasn't a Gastrich sock, but it was
interested in pretty close to the same thing; spamming and promoting Louisiana
Baptist University and whitewashing the article. We didn't lose much for
blocking it. Note incidentally, that this isn't the sort of evidence we are
talking about above- that sort is almost never wrong.

And I've love to discuss this in more detail but I'm not going to do it 
over an
open list. There's no need to give these people any more help.